This is the first in a series of occasional posts covering another side of the it’seeze business: custom development.
Many web application companies take a ‘one size fits all’ approach, and shy away from custom development. After all, custom development is hard: you need to liaise with the client, draw up a specification, come up with a fair price, create the code, and maintain it as the customer’s business evolves over time. On top of this, if you don’t plan ahead then you end up with hundreds of incompatible variations of your core application.
At it’seeze we’ve avoided the final problem through good application design – there’s just one version of the editing system, used by all clients no matter what custom code they have – but there’s no getting around the fact that custom development is hard. That’s okay though – people will pay for good solutions to hard problems, and it sets us apart both from other web application companies who won’t take on this kind of work and from the dreaded IT consultancies who charge eye-watering amounts.
The top of the Homeship home page
The brief
Homeship is a new service from the nationwide logistics firm MIW. Whereas MIW targets business customers, Homeship is aimed at the general public. Their brief was simple – create a website where potential customers can generate quotes and pay online – and they even had an idea for the application flow.
This sounds like a developer’s dream: the client has come up with the specification, so all you need to do is write it down and implement it. This would be doing the client a great disservice. As a developer it’s important to remember that while the client knows more about their business than you ever will, they’re not an expert on application design – that’s what they’re paying you for. After discussions with Homeship we came up with an application flow so simple that you can get a quote in as little as 30 seconds
The application
A prominent form on the Homeship home page lets you enter the collection and delivery postcodes. You’re then taken into the application, which consists of a series of simple forms. Let’s have a look at the first of these:
Providing details of the items to be delivered
There are two lines of instructions, but you don’t need to read them – it’s completely clear what you need to do. This is the key to good web application design: people have arrived on your website from a search engine, and they can just as easily go back and click on a different result, so your application had better be completely intuitive.
The quotation, with the option to proceed to payment
After filling in this form, you’re presented with your quote. You enter your name and e-mail address, and have two options: proceed to payment, or just be e-mailed the quote. If you choose to proceed to payment you’re asked for the remaining details – your desired delivery date, collection and delivery addresses, and telephone numbers – and then it’s off to PayPal to pay. That’s all there is to it.
The administration system
Let’s face it: administration systems are boring. That’s no excuse for them to be ugly as well. Sure, only you and the client will ever see it, but don’t they deserve better than monochrome Times New Roman? They’re going to be using this system every day, so seize the opporunity to make their lives a little more pleasant. Let’s have a look at a page from the Homeship administration system:
Managing zones in the Homeship administration system
The visual similarity with the front-end of the site is obvious, and this consistency makes it easier for Homeship employees to use the system. This kind of attention to detail is the hallmark of our custom development work, and it delights our clients.
